It’s been just over a week since I wrote about being removed from Her Best Life luxury women’s retreat featuring Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, and the response has been, to put it mildly, unhinged.

Not from the organisers. Not from the retreat itself. From strangers on the internet.

WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Harry and Meghan’s Australian tour boosts brand Sussex

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My Instagram DMs filled up quickly, one woman (that I know of) made a TikTok ranting about me.

The tone ranged from defensive to accusatory to outright hostile, with a surprising number of people confidently informing me that I am, apparently, a Meghan hater, a bad person and, in some cases, something far worse.

Which is interesting, because none of that is true.

What seems to have short-circuited the discourse is a concept that is, in theory, quite simple: two things can exist at once.

I can admire Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, be genuinely interested in hearing her speak and still feel disappointed by how an event connected to her was handled.

I can be both supportive and critical. That’s not hypocrisy, it’s nuance.

But nuance does not perform particularly well online.

READ MORE: I paid $2699 for a weekend with Meghan Markle, then I got kicked out

Instead, what followed felt like a smaller, more personal version of the exact dynamic Meghan herself has spoken about for years.

The pile-on. The assumptions. The speed at which a stranger becomes a target simply for saying something that doesn’t align with a preferred narrative.

And that’s where the irony becomes difficult to ignore.

Many of the messages I received were framed as defence. Defence of Meghan. Defence of women. Defence of the event.

And yet the tone, the aggression, the willingness to jump to personal attacks all echoed the very culture of online harassment that Meghan has publicly pushed back against.

At a certain point, it becomes worth asking: what exactly are you defending and at what cost?

Because sending abuse to someone for sharing their personal experience does not protect anyone, it simply extends the same behaviour further down the line.

There was also a particularly strange accusation woven through the noise: the idea that I am somehow “profiting” from this.

I regret to inform those people that this is not how journalism works.

I am a full-time, salaried journalist. I do not receive a bonus every time I have an uncomfortable experience and decide to write about it.

There is no secret payout for being refunded from a wellness retreat and then dealing with a week of hostile Instagram messages.

If anything, the opposite is true. Writing honestly about experiences like this tends to invite scrutiny, not reward.

What I did was exactly what journalists do. I experienced something unusual, documented it factually and shared it. That’s the job.

It’s also been confronting to see tabloids pick up fragments of my story, name me, quote me and frame a narrative in ways that veer into the same kind of harmful rhetoric that has followed Meghan and Prince Harry for years.

To be clear, I want no part in that. I like them both, and sharing my experience was about transparency, not contributing to narratives I don’t stand behind.

And to be clear, the core of the original story has not changed.

• I registered interest.
• I was invited.
• I paid nearly $3000.
• I was welcomed.
• I was then removed because of my job, despite no disclosed policy stating media were not allowed.

That is what happened.

Understanding that security around a high-profile figure is tight does not negate the fact that the process itself was poorly communicated.

Both things can be true. In fact, they are.

If anything, acknowledging that reality strengthens the argument.

It was not malicious, but it was mishandled. And that was the point.

What has surprised me most is not that people disagreed — disagreement is healthy — but that the reaction tipped so quickly into personal attack.

Grown women, many of whom the retreat is ostensibly designed to empower, are choosing to direct that energy at another woman for simply recounting her experience.

It raises a broader question about the kind of “community” we are so eager to buy into.

Because if the idea is connection, support and meaningful conversation, then surely that extends beyond the boundaries of a paid weekend.

Surely it includes allowing space for someone to say “this didn’t sit right with me,” without being shouted down and harassed for it.

Not all of the response was negative.

In fact, one woman’s wellness retreat in Melbourne reached out to me directly, offering a place at their own event and acknowledging that what happened didn’t feel fair.

It was a small gesture, but a telling one. Proof that it is possible to engage with criticism without hostility.

As for Her Best Life, I haven’t heard anything further and I don’t expect to.

I do, however, hope that the women who attended the retreat this past weekend and Meghan herself had a genuinely positive experience. That part has never been in question.

What lingers is simply this: there was a version of events where I could have attended as a paying guest, as intended, and none of this would exist.

Instead, I was asked to sit it out.

And when I spoke about it, I was told, loudly and repeatedly, that I shouldn’t have.

That, more than anything, is the part I find hardest to reconcile.

Because if sharing a factual experience invites this level of backlash, it says far less about me than it does about the environment we’ve all somehow agreed to participate in.

And I, for one, am not particularly interested in staying quiet just to make that environment more comfortable.

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Port Adelaide superstar Zak Butters has sensationally had his umpire abuse case thrown out after the appeals board dismissed the tribunal’s original charge.

The verdict puts an end to an eight-day saga that has dominated headlines since Butters allegedly said, “How much are they paying you?” to umpire Nick Foot during the Power’s 14-point loss to St Kilda.

Butters vehemently denied that comment, insisting he said: “Surely that’s not a free kick,” but he will be forced to pay a $1500 fine.

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But in the end, none of that mattered as the the conduct of tribunal member Jason Johnson ultimately amounted to an error of law and got the case thrown out.

At Monday’s appeal hearing, Port Adelaide argued that Johnson listening to part of the tribunal while driving his car constitutes a “miscarriage of justice”.

During last week’s tribunal hearing, Johnson dropped off the call briefly as he transferred from his laptop to his car to attend a prior commitment.

Tribunal chair Renee Enborn KC had also set a deadline for the end of the hearing, which meant they didn’t disclose the reasons for their guilty verdict until the following day.

But Port Adelaide legal counsel Paul Ehrlich KC centered their argument on Johnson, who was “driving during the final submissions and also deliberations”.

“It was inexplicable and amounted to a miscarriage of justice. It was conduct that ought to be disclosed and wasn’t disclosed,” Ehrlich argued.

“This was not a mere change in platform … it is to be inferred his mind was elsewhere through final submissions because he was conscious he had to leave or be late for his open inspection.

“Whether Johnson heard all the deliberations or not, the fact of the matter is he could not have been properly considering while he was driving a motor vehicle.”

In a funny sidenote, Ehrlich apologised for his dogs barking in the background while making his submissions.

Arguing for the AFL, Albert Dinelli KC said that while Johnson’s actions were regrettable, he was only disconnected for one minute and 22 seconds.

“It not clear if anything was missed … that (period of time) alone could not rise to the standard that is being described,” he said.

“It was a minor lapse and not one that could be described as serious.

“It is not said that he was not paying attention at all, albeit driving for part of the submissions and present for the deliberations.”

The appeals board, made up of Will Houghton (Chair), Stephen Jurica and Richard Loveridge, took just under 30 minutes to make their decision.

They offered a re-hearing, but the AFL had earlier confirmed they will not seek a re-trial, so Butters is in the clear on a technicality.

The AFL released a statement shortly after the verdict.

“The AFL apologises for the inconvenience caused to the parties for the error of law that has led to this outcome, in particular Zak Butters, Ollie Wines and Ben Rutten of the Port Adelaide Football Club and AFL umpire Nick Foot,” they said.

“The AFL reiterates its strong support for the AFL tribunal and all of those who make an important contribution to the conduct of the AFL disciplinary system, including former players who lend an important perspective to these matters. The AFL also expresses its strong support for umpires at all levels and the vital role they play in our sport.

“The AFL will now reflect on the reasons of the appeal board and learnings from tonight’s outcome.”

Last week, the tribunal said they were “satisfied to the requisite standard” Butters had made the offending comment.

“It is implausible that Mr Foot would invent the offending comment,” the tribunal’s judgment said.

“It was put to him that there were several distractions and that he had misheard what Mr Butters said. We also consider that to be implausible.”

Butters vehemently denied that comment, insisting he said: “Surely that’s not a free kick.”

The flashpoint came when Foot paid a free kick to St Kilda’s Mitch Owens, prompting Port’s Ollie Wines and Butters to protest.

“The comment that Butters made to me was ‘How much are they paying you?’” Foot told the tribunal.

“It questioned my integrity. I’m 100 per cent adamant that those are the words Zak Butters said to me.”

But Butters said he was “100 per cent sure” he did not make that remark.

– With AAP

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